


Explosion

by Zoya113



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: F/M, Infected Paul, Injury, blood tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 05:29:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20830184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya113/pseuds/Zoya113
Summary: As the infection sets in, Paul uses the last bit of his consciousness to make sure Emma is rescued from the island





	Explosion

**Author's Note:**

> Day 2 of this prompt thing I’m doing too early lmao

The infection was working his way inside him, ever so slowly. He could feel it taking root inside him and with every breath he had to struggle less.

The explosion had hit him hard, it had picked him up and pitched him to the other side of the theatre and he had collapsed, crumpled up over the seats.  
Everything had hurt. His legs might have been broken, and his hand was mangled from the grenade. There was shrapnel embedded in his skin and he could feel a pool of blood puddling underneath him, although he couldn’t tell where the blood was coming from. 

His ears were ringing like mad and he couldn’t hear a single thing but with each passing second, the sound of singing began to grow. 

He knew his life depended on fighting off the infection but as it courses further through his veins he wasn’t sure he could anymore.

His body had stopped hurting, and he could breathe easily. All of a sudden, nothing seemed wrong. 

He stiffly sat up, worried something would hurt, but instead was only met with the unpleasant feeling of the pool of blood sloshing out from underneath him and running down his back.

He raised his bad hand, it was ripped and bloody and one finger was absolutely broken. It was bent backwards and he could see the bone, but it did not hurt.  
His brain was working slowly, not quite able to register yet what was happening. It was still too raw. 

Over the ringing of his ears he could hear a disgusting squelching sound, and the shrapnel embedded into his skin fell out.  
He ran his good hand over his cheek, expecting it to come back bloody but instead, he was perfectly fine. 

His skin was smooth and untouched.  
He looked over at his mangled hand and he would have gasped if his body decided to respond to him.

The blue, oozing slime was dripping from his wounds and gashes, webbing across his mangled cuts.

“Ugh,” he mumbled, squinting. 

The blue slime webbed around his hand, paling and stretching until it looked like nerves and muscle and faded into his skin.  
The same blue slime bridges over his wounded finger, stringing it back together from the inside out.

He gave his hand a shake as if he couldn’t believe it. It was completely healed, he wouldn’t have noticed the difference. 

As he stood, his whole body felt heavy and drowsy like he could fall asleep standing up if he wasn’t careful. 

But as he walked, step after step out of the theatre he noticed the heaviness wasn’t in his bones or his eyes and he could move just fine, but rather his mind.  
It was like the infection was trying to smoke him out. 

He had to fight it, or did he? 

Any sense of urgency or panic was ducked and hidden by the fog in his brain and all he felt was calm. 

Until he remembered Emma. 

“Emma!” The word came out without his command and he focused all of his remaining energy on controlling his body. Just another step, just another step he kept telling himself as his consciousness began to fade. 

He couldn’t leave her. He couldn’t give up to the infection. He had to gain control of his body somehow. 

She was out here somewhere, hurt and bleeding and maybe even dying. 

He honed his energy and focus in on just his pinkie finger, and he could just wiggle the top ever so slightly.

He built up the energy, picturing it as a small glow around his finger before building it up to his hand, and then his arm, but every time he put too much energy into his hands his focus was drawn away from his feet, and his body would take him off route.

“No!” He clenched his free hand. “We are going to Emma!” He had to force the message through gritted teeth. 

He couldn’t give up control just yet.

With each passing second he grew more lethargic and languid, and his control dropped down into just his hand again. 

He felt his head tilting backwards in a dizzying motion and his eyes saw something zoom past overhead.  
A black helicopter. And then another, and then two more.  
PEIP had come, they were finally here. 

“Emma!” His body reminded him unwillingly but fortunately.  
“Emma! Emma I’m sorry!” He went off again. “Emma, I want you to join the party!” 

With his free hand he slapped it over his mouth. The singing had begun.  
He didn’t have as much time as he thought, the infection was powerful. He took in a deep breath and could feel the spores in his lungs, crawling up his throat.  
He gagged at the feeling, and a splatted of neon blue flew from his mouth. 

“No, no, oh fuck.” He gurgled, feeling it rising from his gut. 

This wasn’t supposed to happen, he had to get back to Emma and they were supposed to escape together. 

“Emma!” There she was. 

Curled up feebly on the asphalt in a puddle of blood too big for someone her size. 

Her jaw was hanging open and a steady dribble of crimson was trickling down her cheek. 

The blood had soaked her white blouse, sticking it to her skin and drying in her hair. 

Her bad leg was drenched in blood. There was more red than skin, and he couldn’t see her skin over the sticky mess. The bar was still sticking out and the skin was inflamed and swollen in ugly shades of maroon and navy. 

“No, oh my god, no,” it was supposed to come out as a scream but only a whisper made it past the infection. 

He forced his body a few more steps forward. 

Overhead, one of the helicopters landed on a nearby building. 

He held his breath in his lungs.  
Once, when he was still in school he used it as a fun trick to help him stay awake, although he never knew if it really worked. But now his life and hers depended on its validity. 

He didn’t have the control to kneel, and instead forced his body to its knees by focusing on his spine and collapsing. 

“Hey, Em? Emma?” He touched her shoulder lightly and she screamed.  
Her voice was cracked and barely had any force behind it but it was still louder than the ringing in his ears. 

“Emma, I can’t come with you,” he wanted to cry but his body would not give him that mercy. “You have to escape on your own, and you’ll do it okay? You’re gonna get out of here just like you said.” He didn’t touch her again, she couldn’t handle it. 

Her skin was pale and sweaty and some deep, uncontrolled part of his brain told him to infect her. 

It was the infection beginning to take rise, finally forcing him out of his own brain.  
“If I infect you,” he started, wiping the blue blood off his hands. “The pain will stop.”  
But he couldn’t do that to her. 

The thought rang through his mind repetitively like a steady heartbeat as the infection grew inside him. 

“I’m infected,” he told her. “I’m sorry, I don’t think the meteor plan worked.” He coughed as his body titled his head up again. 

The people piling out of the helicopters were dressed in black and armed to the teeth with guns. They were shouting in codes, swinging and gesturing with their hands. 

“But these guys will rescue you. I promise.” He looked around. She was too hidden in the wreckage of the helicopter.  
“I have to move you.” 

Emma whines at the mention, her hands gripping and her teeth gritting. She let out another pained, exhausted wail. 

“You don’t have much blood left,” he dared to glance at the pool she was laying in. “They need to find you immediately.”

She couldn’t seem to grasp the right reaction as he, as carefully as his body would allow, picked her up from the ground. 

Her skin peeled from the pool of blood as he raised her and it squelched under his shoes as he walked through it. 

Her body wasn’t sure whether it wasn’t to spasm or finally give in and she contorted and twisted in his arms, trying to find an unreachable comfort. 

He needed to focus even harder now as the infection set in and he was slowly losing touch with his reality. 

His hearing was gone, but at least his ears weren’t ringing. 

The only real sense he still had to himself was his sight, which was a good thing really. 

He watched her mouth open to scream but couldn’t hear a thing. 

He topped up his focus with just a little more energy to pull her in closer to his chest in hopes it would offer her some comfort, maybe it would translate that even if she was in pain, someone was with her. 

He rested her down in the centre of the road, her viscous blood dripping off his hands. 

“They’ll find you here Emma. I promise.”  
He gave the infection control of his hands again, letting it fill him up. 

He could her whispers of song in the very back of his head, urging him to join them and give up faster, but he kept control of his legs. 

He ran back to the helicopter crash, letting himself collapse again. 

“Okay,” his tone was shaky and he was sure that the next time he opened his mouth it would be in song. “Okay, okay, okay.” 

He lowered himself to the ground on his chest as if he were finally laying down for the rest he so deserved. 

He could see Emma from his hiding spot, and the PEIP personnel were racing towards her, their mouths opening in yells and shouts that he couldn’t hear.

They knelt around her, surrounding her as if she was the only thing left on this island that mattered - and she was. 

As he allowed the infection to wrap its greedy fingers around each cell of his brain and when he blinked he opened his eyes to darkness. 

The infection had won.

But with his last sliver of consciousness he jeered at it. 

Emma had been saved, and one day she was going to return the favour.  
He believed in her, he trusted her.  
One day she would rescue him. She was the Hive’s biggest enemy.

It hadn’t won, it just hadn’t lost yet.


End file.
